HOME START: FAMILY-CENTERED PRESCHOOL ENRICHMENT
FOR BLACK AND WHITE CHILDREN',
2
RALPH SCOTT
University
of
Northern
Iowa
It
is acknowledged generally that preschool compensatory education programs,
such as Operation Head Start, have failed to provide disadvantaged preschool
children with the environmental boost they require if they are to succeed within the
classroom (Evans, 1969). The failure of preschool programs
to
bring about durable
I&
or achievement gains
of
vulnerable children has led some authorities to propose
that the goals of early childhood programs may not be feasible and to suggest that
adolescence may be the prime time for educational intervention (Rohwer, 1971).
Many educators, however, continue to assert that environmental enrichment can
be carried out most effectively during the preschool years. Those who subscribe
to this position reason that the failure of current preschool programs discloses the
need for more thorough strategies of early compensatory education. Hunt (1969)
has taken the view that preschool programs really have never been developed and
refined. After an extensive review
of
various preschool programs, Spicker (1971)
concluded that differential approaches and results must be considered when various
early childhood models are assessed. Still other researchers have emphasized the
potential value of cumulative sequential learning over a period of at least several
years and of parental and community involvement (Evans, 1971; Peck, 1971;
Scott, 1967, 1971). In
a
recent discussion of pending federal efforts in preventive
education, Zigler (1971) indicates that a series
of Home Start projects will seek to
discover new and more effective ways to work with parents in their own homes.
This paper presents some results of a Home Start program that was designed
as a total milieu effort to shape the interaction of children, families and community
into a sequence of experiences conducive
to
physical, social, emotional, and cog-
nitive growth. The Home Start program was conceived as a result of
a
series of
Title
I
funded seminars attended by representatives of various community agencies
and elective officials (Scott, 1966). In their assessment of unmet community needs
the seminar participants placed top priority on prevention of educational problems,
which led to the submission of
a
Title
I11
Home Start proposal (Stewart, Thompson
&
Scott, 1968).
METHOD
The
Programs
Home Start consisted of two distinct types
of
program enrichment that ran
concurrently, Horizontal Home Start (HHS) and Vertical Home Start (VHS).
The HHS program consisted of classroom-centered educational enrichment for
4-year-old children during the school years 1968-69 and 1969-70
(40
children per
year). HHS provided an academic year of prekindergarten enrichment,
2%
hours
'This research wag supported in part by grants from the Department of Health, Education and
Welfare (OEG-3-7-068526-2086, Project No. 6-8526 and OEG-0-8-055780-2937, Project No. 68-
05578-0), by Title
I
of
the Higher Education Act
of
1965, Community Development Division (67-003-
027), and by Research Grant 302-67, University
of
Northern
Iowa.
2The author wishes to acknowledge the most helpful comments and assistance of Duane Stewart,
Helen Thompson, Glenda Mabry and Agnes Walsh during the execution
of
the study.